No we don’t eat bats, but you’d be surprised what else Chinese people don’t generally like to eat.

I would like to set the record straight. Chinese people don’t eat bats. Go into any city in China, you will not find bat on the menu, over 99% of the population have gone through life without consuming anything remotely related to bats or rodents. No one eats sweet and sour pork either but that’s another topic entirely.

Let’s look at some agreed upon facts. The fact that I’m ethnically Chinese, means that I am part of one of the oldest and most populous ethnic groups on the planet. Specifically, Han Chinese are the world’s largest ethnicity at about 1.3 billion or slightly over 16% of the world’s population. There are a lot of racist horrible things that you can say about the Chinese that would make sense, but disease infested prone to eating animals that will cause epidemics is definitely not a justifiable racial bias by any metric. In fact, if you want to measure the biological success of any ethnic group by population, the Chinese and the Indians have a lot for the world to learn from.

The stigma of eating dangerous and crazy things is truly a cultural one. Common western fears about Chinese food include chicken’s feet, guts, and dogs. For those of you that don’t know, there are things that a lot of Chinese people have stigmas about too. These are things many Chinese would say are crazy or bad to eat. Some are based on truths some are not.

1) Raw eggs or runny eggs

The sight of runny scrambled eggs or a sunny side up egg with a nice runny yolk makes a lot of Chinese people recoil. This maybe is routed in the fear that eggs may contain salmonella, which is true. There is a risk however small of salmonella being inside raw eggs and no one at the CDC would recommend that you eat a runny or raw egg.

2) Salads or uncooked raw vegetables

There are very few salads in traditional Chinese cooking for good reason, there are risks associated with eating uncooked greens. Just search E. coli outbreak and spinach.

3) Cold beverages, ice, cold water

Now nothing was more annoying than drinking a room temperature beer especially in the early days in China in the 90s. And this is where I get into many arguments with Chinese people with the health risks associated with drinking cold things. There is a belief in traditional Chinese medicine that “cold” this bad for the body. There is some science to back this up: boiling hot things kill bugs, a colder body temperature can cause your immune system to slow down etc.. Women in China especially during their periods will not touch cold foods because of either physical or psychological discomfort and perhaps the believe that they are harming their bodies with “the cold.” How prevalent is this belief? At every restaurant in China you can still order a beer at room or a bottled water at room temperature.

4) Meat must be well done

Similar to uncooked greens, the sight of blood is considered by many Chinese that food is unsafe to eat. There are however regional exceptions, Cantonese people in the south like their chicken slightly undercooked where you can still see blood in the bones, but a rare steak and the sight of raw blood in general makes most Chinese people cringe. But cooked blood, like ducks or pigs blood in a gelatinous tofu like cube form, yes please!

5) Raw fish/sushi

With the recent economic boom and the globalization of China’s economy, sushi popularity has been on the rise. But since the outbreak, people have returned to their old habits and fears — raw fish is unsafe to eat. The sushi restaurants have taken a huge loss of business here.

There are more, but the general picture that I’m trying to build is for people to understand that these are the norms for Chinese. You don’t survive and become one of the biggest populations in the world without a strong food culture that also keeps you safe.

The Problem with Eating Exotic Animals

But what about the exotic animals? The bear paws, the lizards, the snakes, shark’s fin, pangolins etc… There is another part of Chinese culture that I have had difficulty coming to grips with. There are 2 ways we can examine this to try and understand the root cause to this behavior. First off, displays of status and wealth are important to the Chinese culture. So much so that foods that are expensive, or difficult to acquire signify the wealth or status of the person who’s consuming it. A western equivalent would be someone ordering a fancy bottle of wine during a night out- an act also undoubtedly related to displays of wealth and status. Because of the importance of food culture, expensive and rare, and perhaps even endangered food such as a pangolin maybe seen with the same reverence as a fine bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild. Normal people don’t eat this type of food, just like the average Joe in America won’t be drinking fine wine during lunch. The government has cracked down on the trade of exotic animals and has tried changing these consumption perceptions in the past, but with the epidemic that has fueled fears in China to the point of shut down, I believe societal and government pressures will further quell this perception that eating rare and exotic animals is a good idea.

The other way to examine this is a far more touchy subject, it’s in the area of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In Chinese culture, food and medicine are not seen as 2 separate categories, all foods contain medicinal properties. There are things that are eaten simply because Chinese people believe it’s medicine — bear bile and rhino horn for example. Many cures are backed by science but others are not and the Chinese government has taken a conservative stance to promote and push TCM but at the same time needing to balance with what is sustainable and what is just nonsense. The aforementioned rhino horn is banned in China where as bear bile farming is still happening.

Pandemics are a phenomenon and that will continue to be a threat in our world as air travel and a globalized integrated economy are a pandora’s box we have opened and will never close. Prior to our modern economy the plague had to travel by rats on a ship and fear and information would travel even slower. Nowadays pandemics can spread fast, but also information can spread even faster at the speed of our social networks. The spread of misinformation, fear, racism can only be combatted by spreading facts, discussions, and balanced opinions. Chinese people don’t eat bats, nor should you — spread the word.